Thursday, 28 November 2013

It appears that moderators of comments at the bottom of the page of a newspaper article tend to lack humour. I'd placed a couple of pieces (http://juanrodolfowilcock.blogspot.ru/2013/11/juan-rodolfo-wilcocks-practical-advice.html and http://juanrodolfowilcock.blogspot.ru/2013/11/juan-rodolfo-wilcock-on-how-to.html ) by Juan Rodolfo Wilcock adding them as comments to newspaper articles on subjects which had some relevance. While some newspapers never added the comment (OK, fair enough), to my astonishment I found that the Guardian which always adds comments automatically after posting found my comments so shocking that not only did they moderate them but put me in their special purgatorial state of "pre-moderation" (one step before being banned and reserved for angry trolls and spammers). Curious to know why the humour of a writer- a friend of (and highly rated by) Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Bolano, Vittorio Gassman, Roberto Calasso among many, many others) should induce a status of comment non grata in the Guardian. So I've decided that my next step is to collect quotes from satirical authors and world classics (including Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes) maybe modifying them slightly to make them relevant to the article in question (but without making them personally insulting in any way as well as avoiding obvious sexism, homophobia and racism)- and see which respected authors get one banned from commenting in these newspapers. What kind of satire is off limits for the Anglo-Saxon news makers?I'd be fascinated to hear from anyone else trying something similar.

About Me

My interests include Soviet/Russian (as well as post-Soviet) film, world cinema, Soviet/Russian literature,Argentinian literature,radical thought, history. The works of Juan Rodolfo Wilcock, Dino Campana, Cesar Vallejo, Roberto Arlt and the philosophy of Evald Ilyenkov and the works of many, many others. I have a twitter account @GiulianoVivaldi where smaller news is added and a Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/GiuVivRussianFilm For any interested in events surrounding the 40th anniversary of Pasolini's murder and exploring the Italian 1970s, please join the Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Pasolinianni70/